If you're going to speak archaic English, use it correctly!

Many a time I have heard people try to imitate archaicEnglish (and by archaic I mean as it was spoken in Shakespeare's time), for the sake of a joke or something, and they obviously have no idea how to do it. They use all the wrong forms of the pronoun "thou" and don't conjugateverbs to it, and they often add verbal endings like "-eth" and "-est" to nouns. Here follows a short explanation of some of the main differences between modern and archaic English which will not only improve your Shakespeare jokes, it might help you read actual Shakespeare!

In modern English, we have only one word for second person singular and second person plural. That is, whether you're speaking to one person or a group of people, you still call them "you". In archaic English, however, "you" (or "ye") was reserved for the plural and the singular was always "thou". Here are all the forms of that pronoun:

When "Thou" is the subject of a verb in the presenttense, you must put the verb in the second person singular by adding "-est", or just "-st" if the verb already ends in an "e". Thus "thou eatest", "thou sleepest", and "thou lovest". Some irregular verbs are "thou art", "thou canst", "thou didst", "thou dost" OR "thou doest", "thou hadst", "thou hast", "thou mayst" OR "thou mayest", "thou must", "thou shalt", "thou wast" OR "thou wert".

Sometimes in archaic English a verb ends in "-th" or "-eth" were we would use "-s" or "-es". Thus "time flieth", "my cup runneth over", "this sucketh". It's that simple. Some irregular forms are: "doth" OR "doeth", and "hath".

In modern English whenever we want to negate a verb we have to add an auxiliary such as "do", e.g. "I want ketchup", "I do not (or don't) want ketchup". In archaic English they added "not" right after the verb, with no auxiliary: "I want not ketchup". This is a much simpler and easier system of negation and I don't know why it went out of use.

4. Archaic English also has some cool words like "whither" and "thence"; see from whence for more